Moby-Dick Chapter 16: The Ship Summary Moby-Dick Chapter 16: The Ship Summary NEXT That night in bed, Queequeg tells Ishmael that he’s been talking to the little black statue of his god (which, we learn, is named Yojo), and Yojo wants Ishmael to choose the ship that the two of them will sail with. Ishmael’s pretty nervous about this responsibility. He was hoping Queequeg’s experience with whaling ships would help find the right one. But Queequeg insists that Yojo has already found the right ship and that he’ll help Ishmael choose it. The next morning, Ishmael goes out on his own. It seems to be some kind of religious holiday for Queequeg, who stays at the inn fasting, smoking, and offering a sacrifice of biscuit to Yojo. Ishmael finds out that there are three ships about to sail for three-year voyages: the Devil-Dam, the Tit-Bit, and the Pequod. He chooses the Pequod. The Pequod is an older ship that has already been on a lot of whaling voyages.

It has a lot of character, and is decorated with sea-ivory—whalebone and teeth. On board the Pequod, Ishmael looks around for someone in charge. He sees a strange teepee-like tent made of whalebone on the deck and enters it, where he finds a "brown and brawny" old seaman who seems to have some authority. Ishmael tells the old seaman that he wants to join the Pequod’s whaling expedition, and explains that he doesn’t have any specific whaling experience, but he has been in the merchant service before. The old man scoffs—merchant service! The idea!—and asks why Ishmael wants to go whaling. Ishmael says that he wants "to see what whaling is" and "to see the world" (16.18). The old man asks Ishmael if he’s met Captain Ahab. Ishmael is confused. He thought the old man was the captain of the Pequod. The man explains that he is Captain Peleg, and that he and Captain Bildad, who are both retired, own the ship and are outfitting it with men and supplies.

(It’s like their investment plan for retirement.) Captain Ahab will actually be in charge of the ship on its voyage. Captain Peleg tells Ishmael that Captain Ahab lost a leg to a whale, and asks if he’s still willing to go on a whaling voyage. Ishmael says that he is. Ishmael’s formal manner of speaking rubs Captain Peleg the wrong way, and the Captain wonders if Ishmael is tough enough for a whaling voyage. Captain Peleg asks Ishmael if he would throw a harpoon down a whale’s throat and jump after it. Ishmael says he would if it was absolutely necessary, but he thinks it could probably be avoided. This is, apparently, the right answer, which is good to know, for those of you planning to hunt the wily sperm whale. Next, Captain Peleg takes on Ishmael’s desire to "see the world." He asks Ishmael to look across the bow of the ship and tell him what’s there: it’s nothing but water. Captain Peleg tells Ishmael that’s the only world he’d see on a whaling voyage.

Ishmael’s a little shaken by this, but remains firm on the whaling thing. Captain Peleg takes him below decks to sign a contract, where Ishmael meets Captain Bildad. Ishmael explains that both Peleg and Bildad are Quakers, but they’re "fighting Quakers" who have been adapted by their circumstances to be bloodthirsty seamen. (This is a little joke from Melville, because Quakers are famous for being pacifists and conscientious objectors.) Captain Bildad, according to Ishmael, has stricter Quaker principles and is more obsessed with his religious foundation than Captain Peleg. Ishmael thinks Captain Bildad is a little bit hypocritical, because he won’t shed the blood of men on land, but he’s slaughtered lots of whales on the sea. Captain Bildad also has a reputation for working his men incredibly hard. His own body is lean and clean-shaven—there’s nothing extra or superfluous to him. When Ishmael and Captain Peleg approach Captain Bildad, Bildad is sitting stiffly upright reading the Bible.

Peleg asks Bildad if Ishmael is an appropriate sailor for the Pequod, and Bildad gives him the okay. Captain Peleg takes out a copy of the ship’s articles (the contract between the owners of the Pequod and its sailors) and a pen and starts to add Ishmael to the contract. Ishmael tells the reader that he already knows a little bit about how whaling works: seamen aren’t paid wages, but they get a certain percentage of the net profits of the voyage. Ishmael has no whaling experience, but he has been to sea before, and he’s decided that he should be offered what’s called the 275th lay—at least 1/275 of the net profits. He thinks he might get something as good as the 200th lay. Ishmael’s a little suspicious at this point, because he’s heard that Peleg and Bildad can be stingy, especially Bildad. Peleg asks Bildad what lay Ishmael should get, and Bildad suggests the 777th lay.

(This is another in-joke: 777 is a Biblical number, and Bildad is reading Matthew 6:19, which advises people not to lay up treasure on the earth.) Peleg says that the 777th lay would be swindling Ishmael and suggests the 300th lay. Bildad reminds Peleg that some of the investors in the Pequod are widows and orphans, and that giving Ishmael too large a share in the profits would be swindling these unfortunates. Peleg and Bildad keep arguing over Ishmael’s lay, and finally Peleg seems to get so angry that he rushes at Bildad as though he’s going to attack him. Ishmael is almost ready to leave and forget about whaling completely, but suddenly Bildad and Peleg both settle down and Peleg puts Ishmael down on the ship’s articles for the 300th lay. Ishmael tells Peleg that he has a friend with whaling experience who also wants to voyage on the Pequod, and Peleg tells him to bring the friend (Queequeg, we miss you!) the next day.

Ishmael leaves, feeling pretty good about his decision—but then he realizes he’s still never met or even seen Captain Ahab. He goes back and asks Captain Peleg where Captain Ahab is. Peleg tells Ishmael that he can’t see Ahab at this point because Ahab has been shutting himself up alone in his house. Peleg tries to describe Ahab’s virtues to reassure Ishmael, but Ahab sounds really strange and alarming: Peleg calls him "a grand, ungodly, god-like man" (16.79). Ishmael suggests that the name "Ahab" has disturbing Biblical connotations. (You might want to read the story about Ahab and Naboth’s vineyard in 1 Kings 21 .) Captain Peleg gets angry and reminds Ishmael that Ahab didn’t choose his name... but then admits that a Native American seer said that Ahab’s name would be prophetic in some way.

Peleg admits that Ahab has been "moody" and "savage" since he lost his leg fighting a whale, but tells Ishmael that Ahab is still a good captain, even if he is depressed and angry (16.81). Ishmael leaves, feeling sorry for captain Ahab but also afraid of him. Then he forgets all about him for the time being. The True-Life Horror That Inspired Moby-Dick | History | Smithsonian The True-Life Horror That Inspired Moby-Dick The whaler Essex was indeed sunk by a whale—and that's only the beginning smithsonian.com March 1, 2013 In July of 1852, a 32-year-old novelist named Herman Melville had high hopes for his new novel, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, despite the book’s mixed reviews and tepid sales. That month he took a steamer to Nantucket for his first visit to the Massachusetts island, home port of his novel’s mythic protagonist, Captain Ahab, and his ship, the Pequod.

Like a tourist, Melville met local dignitaries, dined out and took in the sights of the village he had previously only imagined. From This Story How Nantucket Came to Be the Whaling Capital of the World And on his last day on Nantucket he met the broken-down 60-year-old man who had captained the Essex, the ship that had been attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in an 1820 incident that had inspired Melville’s novel. Captain George Pollard Jr. was just 29 years old when the Essex went down, and he survived and returned to Nantucket to captain a second whaling ship, Two Brothers. But when that ship wrecked on a coral reef two years later, the captain was marked as unlucky at sea—a “Jonah”—and no owner would trust a ship to him again. Pollard lived out his remaining years on land, as the village night watchman. Melville had written about Pollard briefly in Moby-Dick, and only with regard to the whale sinking his ship.

During his visit, Melville later wrote, the two merely “exchanged some words.” But Melville knew Pollard’s ordeal at sea did not end with the sinking of the Essex, and he was not about to evoke the horrific memories that the captain surely carried with him. “To the islanders he was a nobody,” Melville wrote, “to me, the most impressive man, tho’ wholly unassuming, even humble—that I ever encountered.” Pollard had told the full story to fellow captains over a dinner shortly after his rescue from the Essex ordeal, and to a missionary named George Bennet. To Bennet, the tale was like a confession. Certainly, it was grim: 92 days and sleepless nights at sea in a leaking boat with no food, his surviving crew going mad beneath the unforgiving sun, eventual cannibalism and the harrowing fate of two teenage boys, including Pollard’s first cousin, Owen Coffin. “But I can tell you no more—my head is on fire at the recollection,” Pollard told the missionary.

“I hardly know what I say.” The trouble for Essex began, as Melville knew, on August 14, 1819, just two days after it left Nantucket on a whaling voyage that was supposed to last two and a half years. The 87-foot-long ship was hit by a squall that destroyed its topgallant sail and nearly sank it. Still, Pollard continued, making it to Cape Horn five weeks later. But the 20-man crew found the waters off South America nearly fished out, so they decided to sail for distant whaling grounds in the South Pacific, far from any shores. To restock, the Essex anchored at Charles Island in the Galapagos, where the crew collected sixty 100-pound tortoises. As a prank, one of the crew set a fire, which, in the dry season, quickly spread. Pollard’s men barely escaped, having to run through flames, and a day after they set sail, they could still see smoke from the burning island. Pollard was furious, and swore vengeance on whoever set the fire.

Many years later Charles Island was still a blackened wasteland, and the fire was believed to have caused the extinction of both the Floreana Tortoise and the Floreana Mockingbird. Essex First Mate Owen Chase, later in life. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By November of 1820, after months of a prosperous voyage and a thousand miles from the nearest land, whaleboats from the Essex had harpooned whales that dragged them out toward the horizon in what the crew called “Nantucket sleigh rides.” Owen Chase, the 23-year-old first mate, had stayed aboard the Essex to make repairs while Pollard went whaling. It was Chase who spotted a very big whale—85 feet in length, he estimated—lying quietly in the distance, its head facing the ship. Then, after two or three spouts, the giant made straight for the Essex, “coming down for us at great celerity,” Chase would recall—at about three knots. The whale smashed head-on into the ship with “such an appalling and tremendous jar, as nearly threw us all on our faces.” The whale passed underneath the ship and began thrashing in the water.

“I could distinctly see him smite his jaws together, as if distracted with rage and fury,” Chase recalled. Then the whale disappeared. The crew was addressing the hole in the ship and getting the pumps working when one man cried out, “Here he is—he is making for us again.” Chase spotted the whale, his head half out of water, bearing down at great speed—this time at six knots, Chase thought. This time it hit the bow directly under the cathead and disappeared for good. The water rushed into the ship so fast, the only thing the crew could do was lower the boats and try fill them with navigational instruments, bread, water and supplies before the Essex turned over on its side. Pollard saw his ship in distress from a distance, then returned to see the Essex in ruin. Dumbfounded, he asked, “My God, Mr. Chase, what is the matter?” “We have been stove by a whale,” his first mate answered. Another boat returned, and the men sat in silence, their captain still pale and speechless.

Some, Chase observed, “had no idea of the extent of their deplorable situation.” The men were unwilling to leave the doomed Essex as it slowly foundered, and Pollard tried to come up with a plan. In all, there were three boats and 20 men. They calculated that the closest land was the Marquesas Islands and the Society Islands, and Pollard wanted to set off for them—but in one of the most ironic decisions in nautical history, Chase and the crew convinced him that those islands were peopled with cannibals and that the crew’s best chance for survival would be to sail south. The distance to land would be far greater, but they might catch the trade winds or be spotted by another whaling ship. Only Pollard seemed to understand the implications of steering clear of the islands. (According to Nathaniel Philbrick, in his book In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, although rumors of cannibalism persisted, traders had been visiting the islands without incident.) Thus they left the Essex aboard their 20-foot boats. They were challenged almost from the start.

Saltwater saturated the bread, and the men began to dehydrate as they ate their daily rations. The sun was ravaging. Pollard’s boat was attacked by a killer whale. They spotted land—Henderson Island—two weeks later, but it was barren. After another week the men began to run out of supplies. Still, three of them decided they’d rather take their chances on land than climb back into a boat. No one could blame them. And besides, it would stretch the provisions for the men in the boats. Herman Melville drew inspiration for Moby-Dick from the 1820 whale attack on the Essex. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By mid-December, after weeks at sea, the boats began to take on water, more whales menaced the men at night, and by January, the paltry rations began to take their toll. On Chase’s boat, one man went mad, stood up and demanded a dinner napkin and water, then fell into “most horrid and frightful convulsions” before perishing the next morning. “Humanity must shudder at the dreadful recital” of what came next, Chase wrote.

The crew “separated limbs from his body, and cut all the flesh from the bones; after which, we opened the body, took out the heart, and then closed it again—sewed it up as decently as we could, and committed it to the sea.” They then roasted the man’s organs on a flat stone and ate them. Over the coming week, three more sailors died, and their bodies were cooked and eaten. One boat disappeared, and then Chase’s and Pollard’s boats lost sight of each other. The rations of human flesh did not last long, and the more the survivors ate, the hungrier they felt. On both boats the men became too weak to talk. The four men on Pollard’s boat reasoned that without more food, they would die. On February 6, 1821—nine weeks after they’d bidden farewell to the Essex—Charles Ramsdell, a teenager, proposed they draw lots to determine who would be eaten next. It was the custom of the sea, dating back, at least in recorded instance, to the first half of the 17th century.

The men in Pollard’s boat accepted Ramsdell’s suggestion, and the lot fell to young Owen Coffin, the captain’s first cousin. Pollard had promised the boy’s mother he’d look out for him. “My lad, my lad!” the captain now shouted, “if you don’t like your lot, I’ll shoot the first man that touches you.” Pollard even offered to step in for the boy, but Coffin would have none of it. “I like it as well as any other,” he said. Ramsdell drew the lot that required him to shoot his friend. He paused a long time. But then Coffin rested his head on the boat’s gunwale and Ramsdell pulled the trigger. “He was soon dispatched,” Pollard would say, “and nothing of him left.” By February 18, after 89 days at sea, the last three men on Chase’s boat spotted a sail in the distance. After a frantic chase, they managed to catch the English ship Indian and were rescued. Three hundred miles away, Pollard’s boat carried only its captain and Charles Ramsdell.

They had only the bones of the last crewmen to perish, which they smashed on the bottom of the boat so that they could eat the marrow. As the days passed the two men obsessed over the bones scattered on the boat’s floor. Almost a week after Chase and his men had been rescued, a crewman aboard the American ship Dauphin spotted Pollard’s boat. Wretched and confused, Pollard and Ramsdell did not rejoice at their rescue, but simply turned to the bottom of their boat and stuffed bones into their pockets. Safely aboard the Dauphin, the two delirious men were seen “sucking the bones of their dead mess mates, which they were loath to part with.” The five Essex survivors were reunited in Valparaiso, where they recuperated before sailing back for Nantucket. As Philbrick writes, Pollard had recovered enough to join several captains for dinner, and he told them the entire story of the Essex wreck and his three harrowing months at sea.

One of the captains present returned to his room and wrote everything down, calling Pollard’s account “the most distressing narrative that ever came to my knowledge.” Years later, the third boat was discovered on Ducie Island; three skeletons were aboard. Miraculously, the three men who chose to stay on Henderson Island survived for nearly four months, mostly on shellfish and bird eggs, until an Australian ship rescued them. Once they arrived in Nantucket, the surviving crewmen of the Essex were welcomed, largely without judgment. Cannibalism in the most dire of circumstances, it was reasoned, was a custom of the sea. (In similar incidents, survivors declined to eat the flesh of the dead but used it as bait for fish. But Philbrick notes that the men of the Essex were in waters largely devoid of marine life at the surface.) Captain Pollard, however, was not as easily forgiven, because he had eaten his cousin. (One scholar later referred to the act as “gastronomic incest.”) Owen Coffin’s mother could not abide being in the captain’s presence. Once his days at sea were over, Pollard spent the rest of his life in Nantucket.

Once a year, on the anniversary of the wreck of the Essex, he was said to have locked himself in his room and fasted in honor of his lost crewmen. By 1852, Melville and Moby-Dick had begun their own slide into obscurity. Despite the author’s hopes, his book sold but a few thousand copies in his lifetime, and Melville, after a few more failed attempts at novels, settled into a reclusive life and spent 19 years as a customs inspector in New York City. He drank and suffered the death of his two sons. Depressed, he abandoned novels for poetry. But George Pollard’s fate was never far from his mind. In his poem Clarel he writes of A night patrolman on the quay Watching the bales till morning hour Through fair and foul. Never he smiled; Call him, and he would come; not sour In spirit, but meek and reconciled: Patient he was, he none withstood; Oft on some secret thing would brood. Sources Books: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale, 1851, Harper & Brothers Publishers.

Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, 2000, Penguin Books. Thomas Nickerson, The Loss of the Ship Essex, Sunk by a Whale, 2000, Penguin Classics. Owen Chase, Narrative of the Whale-Ship Essex of Nantucket, 2006, A RIA Press Edition. Alex MacCormick, The Mammoth Book of Maneaters, 2003, Carroll & Graf Publishers. Joseph S. Cummins, Cannibals: Shocking True Tales of the Last Taboo on Land and at Sea, 2001, The Lyons Press. Evan L. Balkan, Shipwrecked: Deadly Adventures and Disasters at Sea, 2008, Menasha Ridge Press. Articles: “The Whale and the Horror,” by Nathaniel Philbrick, Vanity Fair, May, 2000.

“Herman Melville: Nantucket’s First Tourist?” by Susan Beegel, The Nantucket Historical Association, ”Herman Melville and Nantucket,” The Nantucket Historical Association, Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World, “Biography: Herman Melville,” American Experience, PBS.org, “No Moby-Dick: A Real Captain, Twice Doomed,” by Jesse McKinley, New York Times, February 11, 2011. “The Essex Disaster,” by Walter Karp, American Heritage, April/May, 1983, Volume 34, Issue 3. “Essex (whaleship),” Wikipedia, ”Account of the Ship Essex Sinking, 1819-1821., Thomas Nickerson, Like this article? Whaleship Pequod diorama -- Prison Art Project Whaleship Pequod diorama Primarily paper and clay. 1/35th scale. For my next diorama I'll be going to the literature, to Melville's 1851 novel Moby Dick.

I want to show a small slice of the deck and a couple of figures to illustrate a scene from that book. First up is the scenery, a part of the spar deck of the Pequod, Captain Ahab's 19th century Nantucket whaling ship. The Pequod is described in the book thusly, "her old hull's complexion was darkened like a French grenadier's, who has alike fought in Egypt and Siberia." Furthermore, her decks are described as, "ancient...worn and wrinkled, like the pilgrim-worshipped flag-stone in Canterbury Cathedral where Beckett bled." So, obviously, I'm going for a very well-worn look to the part of the ship I'll model. I want this diorama to be small and intimate, so I'll be using a 4x6 photo frame for the base. This is a very small space, half the size of my usual diorama frames, but I think it will be a welcome change. As before, it will be 1/35th scale, with a six-foot person being a two-inch figure.

First step is the decking, which I'll set it off at a bit of an angle, because it looks better that way. Made with popsicle sticks, cut at various lengths, with every other one showing ends. Paints are various shades of brown, diluted with water and washed over the deck so that the darker colors settle in the gaps, a very weathered look for a ship that's been at sea for years and years. I then took a dull pencil and marked the nails for the end pieces. Looks pretty good. That round hole will be filled with the bottom of the Pequod's main mast. I don't want it too tall, as this is a small diorama, so I'm just using a slanted bottom of a cardboard tube. I see in period photos of sailing ships they wrap rope around the base (for support?), so I have that, plus a wooden peg held down by a paper brace, from which will hang a largish metal bucket made out of paper with a brass wire handle. Paints will be various washes of browns and tans, with brass for the brace and slate gray for the bucket. Then a wooden box.

This is just a half-inch square wooden block, with a square of a popsicle stick for the lid, with paper hinges and bracket. Painted tan with steel metal parts. Lastly a wooden barrel. Made from a baked formed lump of clay with paper strips for the wooden plank sides and more paper strips for the metal bands. Painted dark oaken brown, with brass for the metal bands, plus a circle for the pour hole on the top. Put all together, this is what the scenery looks like... Now for the two people, but first a description of the scene from the book I'm hoping to show. In Chapter 64, we view a man named Stubb eating a hunk of steak cut from a whale they just caught, and berating the poor cook, named Fleece, for the shabby job of boiling up the meat. First up is Stubb, who is Second Mate of the Pequod. Melville describes as, "Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his whaleboat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests." I will make him the usual way, Sculpey clay over a wire skeleton.

Clothing will be period for the 1850s whalers in the Southern Seas, light tan pants, a green hat, and faded red shirt. As Stubb is eating, I have to make a fork, a plate, and a hunk of whale steak. I'll also have his boots off and tossed next to him, so he can dry out his bare feet. Moby Dick takes place in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, hot climates, so I'll try and make his skin tone a bit more tanned than usual. The other figure will be the put-upon cook Fleece, who Melville describes as a very old Black man with bad knees (and not much more of a description, unfortunately). Being the cook, Fleece will have a stained white apron and be holding a pot. He'll have a bare head, bare feet, short khaki pants, blue shirt, and be hunched over a bit. And with that, this diorama is done. Time to finish was just about 4 hours total, spaced out over a few lunch hours, and the cost was just 97 cents for the picture frame, everything else came from existing stocks of materials. Here are the final pictures...

Moby Dick Summary | GradeSaver Moby Dick Summary Buy Study Guide The novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville is an epic tale of the voyage of the whaling ship the Pequod and its captain, Ahab, who relentlessly pursues the great Sperm Whale (the title character) during a journey around the world. The narrator of the novel is Ishmael , a sailor on the Pequod who undertakes the journey out of his affection for the sea. Moby Dick begins with Ishmael's arrival in New Bedford as he travels toward Nantucket. He rests at the Spouter Inn in New Bedford, where he meets Queequeg , a harpooner from New Zealand who will also sail on the Pequod. Although Queequeg appears dangerous, he and Ishmael must share a bed together and the narrator quickly grows fond of the somewhat uncivilized harpooner. Queequeg is actually the son of a High Chief who left New Zealand because of his desire to learn among Christians.

The next day, Ishmael attends a church service and listens to a sermon by Father Mapple , a renowned preacher who delivers a sermon considering Jonah and the whale that concludes that the tale is a lesson to preacher Truth in the face of Falsehood. On a schooner to Nantucket, Ishmael and Queequeg come across a local bumpkin who mocks Queequeg. However, when this bumpkin is swept overboard, Queequeg saves him. In Nantucket, Queequeg and Ishmael choose between three ships for a year journey, and decide upon the Pequod. The Captain of the Pequod, Peleg , is now retired, and merely owns the boat with another Quaker, Bildad . Peleg tells them of the new captain, Ahab, and immediately describes him as a grand and ungodly man. Before leaving for their voyage, Ishmael and Queequeg come across a stranger named Elijah who predicts disaster on their journey. Before leaving on the Pequod, Elijah again predicts disaster. Ishmael and Queequeg board the Pequod, where Captain Ahab is still unseen, secluded in his own cabin.

Peleg and Bildad consult with Starbuck , the first mate. He is a Quaker and a Nantucket native who is quite practical. The second mate is Stubb , a Cape Cod native with a more jovial and carefree attitude. The third is Flask , a Martha's Vineyard native with a pugnacious attitude. Melville introduces the rest of the crew, including the Indian harpooner Tashtego , the African harpooner Daggoo . Several days into the voyage, Ahab finally appears as a man seemingly made of bronze who stands on an ivory leg fashioned from whalebone. He eventually gets into a violent argument with Stubb when the second mate makes a joke at Ahab's expense, and kicks him. This leads Stubb to dream of kicking Ahab's ivory leg off, but Flask claims that the kick from Ahab is a sign of honor. At last, Ahab tells the crew of the Pequod to look for a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow: Moby Dick, the legendary whale that took Ahab's leg.

Starbuck tells Ahab that his obsession with Moby Dick is madness, but Ahab claims that all things are masks and there is some unknown reasoning behind that mask that man must strike through. For Ahab, Moby Dick is that mask. Ahab himself seems to recognize his own madness. Starbuck begins to worry that the ship is overmatched by the mad captain and knows that he will see an impious end to Ahab. While Queequeg and Ishmael weave a sword-mat for lashing to their boat, the Pequod soon comes upon a whale and Ahab orders his crew to their boats. Ahab orders his special crew, which Ishmael compares to "phantoms," to their boats. The crew attacks a whale and Queequeg does strike it, but this is insufficient to kill it. Among the "phantoms" in the boat is Fedallah , a sinister Parsee. After passing the Cape of Good Hope, the Pequod comes across the Goney (Albatross), another ship on its voyage. Ahab asks whether they have seen Moby Dick as the ships pass one another, but Ahab cannot hear his answer.

The mere passing of the ships is unorthodox behavior, for ships will generally have a 'gam,' a meeting between two ships. The Pequod does have a gam with the next ship it encounters, the Town-Ho. Ishmael interrupts his narration to tell a story that was told to him by the crew of the Town-Ho, just as he would tell it to a circle of Spanish friends after his journey on the Pequod. The story concerns the near mutiny on the Town-Ho and its eventual conflict with Moby Dick. The Pequod does vanquish the next whale that it comes across, as Stubb strikes a whale with his harpoon. However, as the crew of the Pequod attempts to bring the whale into the ship, sharks attack the carcass and Queequeg nearly loses his hand while fending them off. The Pequod next comes upon the Jeroboam, a Nantucket ship afflicted with an epidemic. Stubb later tells a story about the Jeroboam and a mutiny that occurred on this ship because of a Shaker prophet, Gabriel , on board. The captain of the Jeroboam, Mayhew, warns Ahab about Moby Dick.

After vanquishing a Sperm Whale, Stubb next also kills a Right Whale. Although this is not on the ship's agenda, the Pequod pursues a Right Whale because of the good omens associated with having the head of a Sperm Whale and a head of a Right Whale on a ship. Stubb and Flask discuss rumors that Ahab has sold his soul to Fedallah. The next ship that the Pequod meets is the Jungfrau (Virgin), a German ship in desperate need of oil. The Pequod competes with the Virgin for a large whale, and the Pequod is successful in defeating it. However, the whale carcass begins to sink as the Pequod attempts to secure it and thus the Pequod must abandon it. The Pequod next finds a large group of Sperm Whales and injures several of them, but only captures a single one. Stubb concocts a plan to swindle the next ship that the Pequod meets, the French ship Bouton-de-Rose (Rosebud), of ambergris.

Stubb tells them that the whales that they have vanquished are useless and could damage their ship, and when the Rosebud leaves these behind the Pequod takes them in order to gain the ambergris in one of them. Several days after encountering the Rosebud, a young black man on the boat, Pippin , becomes frightened while lowering after a whale and jumps from the boat, becoming entangled in the whale line. Stubb chastises him for his cowardice and tells him that he will be left at sea if he jumps again. When Pippin (Pip) does the same thing again, Stubb remains true to his word and Pip only survives because a nearby boat saves him. Nevertheless, Pip loses his sanity from the event. The next ship that the Pequod encounters, a British ship called the Samuel Enderby, bears news of Moby Dick but its crewman Dr. Bunger warns Ahab to leave the whale alone. Later, Ahab's leg breaks and the carpenter must fix it. Ahab behaves scornfully toward the carpenter. When Starbuck learns that the casks have sprung a leak, he goes to Ahab's cabin to report the news.

Ahab disagrees with Starbuck's advice on the matter, and becomes so enraged that he pulls a musket on Starbuck. Although Ahab warns Starbuck that there is but one God on Earth and one Captain on the Pequod, Starbuck tells him that he will be no danger to Ahab, for Ahab is sufficient danger to himself. Ahab does relent to Starbuck's advice. Queequeg becomes ill from fever and seems to approach death, so he asks for a canoe to serve as a coffin. The carpenter measures Queequeg for his coffin and builds it, but Queequeg returns to health, claiming that he willed his own recovery. Queequeg keeps the coffin and uses it as a sea chest. Upon reaching the Pacific Ocean, Ahab asks Perth the blacksmith to forge a harpoon to use against Moby Dick. Perth fashions a harpoon that Ahab demands be tempered with the blood of his pagan harpooners, and he howls out that he baptizes the harpoon in the name of the devil.

The next ship that the Pequod meets is the Bachelor, a Nantucket ship whose captain denies the existence of Moby Dick. The next day, the Pequod slays four whales, and that night Ahab dreams of hearses. He and Fedallah pledge to slay Moby Dick and survive the conflict, and Ahab boasts of his own immortality. Ahab must soon decide between an easy route past the Cape of Good Hope back to Nantucket and a difficult route in pursuit of Moby Dick. Ahab easily chooses to continue his quest. The Pequod soon comes upon a typhoon on its journey in the Pacific, and while battling this storm the Pequod's compass moves out of alignment. When Starbuck learns this and goes to Ahab's cabin to tell him, he finds the old man asleep. Starbuck considers shooting Ahab with his musket, but he cannot move himself to shoot his captain after he hears Ahab cry in his sleep "Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last." The next morning after the typhoon, Ahab corrects the problem with the compass despite the skepticism of his crew and the ship continues on its journey.

Ahab learns that Pip has gone insane and offers his cabin to the poor boy. The Pequod comes upon yet another ship, the Rachel, whose captain, Gardiner, knows Ahab. He requests the Pequod's help in searching for Gardiner's son, who may be lost at sea, but Ahab flatly refuses when he learns that Moby Dick is nearby. The final ship that the Pequod meets is the Delight, a ship that has recently come upon Moby Dick and has nearly been destroyed by its encounter with the whale. Before finally finding Moby Dick, Ahab reminisces about the day nearly forty years before in which he struck his first whale, and laments the solitude of his years out on the sea. He admits that he has chased his prey as more of a demon than a man. The struggle against Moby Dick lasts three days. On the first day, Ahab spies the whale himself, and the whaling boats row after it. Moby Dick attacks Ahab's boat, causing it to sink, but Ahab survives the ordeal when he reaches Stubb's boat. Despite this first failed attempt at defeating the whale, Ahab pursues him for a second day.

On the second day of the chase, roughly the same defeat occurs. This time Moby Dick breaks Ahab's ivory leg, while Fedallah dies when he becomes entangled in the harpoon line and is drowned. After this second attack, Starbuck chastises Ahab, telling him that his pursuit is impious and blasphemous. Ahab declares that the chase against Moby Dick is immutably decreed, and pursues it for a third day. On the third day of the attack against Moby Dick, Starbuck panics for ceding to Ahab's demands, while Ahab tells Starbuck that "some ships sail from their ports and ever afterwards are missing," seemingly admitting the futility of his mission. When Ahab and his crew reach Moby Dick, Ahab finally stabs the whale with his harpoon but the whale again tips Ahab's boat. However, the whale rams the Pequod and causes it to begin sinking. In a seemingly suicidal act, Ahab throws his harpoon at Moby Dick but becomes entangled in the line and goes down with it.

Only Ishmael survives this attack, for he was fortunate to be on a whaling boat instead of on the Pequod. Eventually he is rescued by the Rachel as its captain continues his search for his missing son, only to find a different orphan. SparkNotes: Moby-Dick: Plot Overview Plot Overview Context Character List Ishmael, the narrator, announces his intent to ship aboard a whaling vessel. He has made several voyages as a sailor but none as a whaler. He travels to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he stays in a whalers’ inn. Since the inn is rather full, he has to share a bed with a harpooner from the South Pacific named Queequeg. At first repulsed by Queequeg’s strange habits and shocking appearance (Queequeg is covered with tattoos), Ishmael eventually comes to appreciate the man’s generosity and kind spirit, and the two decide to seek work on a whaling vessel together. They take a ferry to Nantucket, the traditional capital of the whaling industry. There they secure berths on the Pequod, a savage-looking ship adorned with the bones and teeth of sperm whales.

Peleg and Bildad, the Pequod’s Quaker owners, drive a hard bargain in terms of salary. They also mention the ship’s mysterious captain, Ahab, who is still recovering from losing his leg in an encounter with a sperm whale on his last voyage. The Pequod leaves Nantucket on a cold Christmas Day with a crew made up of men from many different countries and races. Soon the ship is in warmer waters, and Ahab makes his first appearance on deck, balancing gingerly on his false leg, which is made from a sperm whale’s jaw. He announces his desire to pursue and kill Moby Dick, the legendary great white whale who took his leg, because he sees this whale as the embodiment of evil. Ahab nails a gold doubloon to the mast and declares that it will be the prize for the first man to sight the whale. As the Pequod sails toward the southern tip of Africa, whales are sighted and unsuccessfully hunted. During the hunt, a group of men, none of whom anyone on the ship’s crew has seen before on the voyage, emerges from the hold. The men’s leader is an exotic-looking man named Fedallah.

These men constitute Ahab’s private harpoon crew, smuggled aboard in defiance of Bildad and Peleg. Ahab hopes that their skills and Fedallah’s prophetic abilities will help him in his hunt for Moby Dick. The Pequod rounds Africa and enters the Indian Ocean. A few whales are successfully caught and processed for their oil. From time to time, the ship encounters other whaling vessels. Ahab always demands information about Moby Dick from their captains. One of the ships, the Jeroboam, carries Gabriel, a crazed prophet who predicts doom for anyone who threatens Moby Dick. His predictions seem to carry some weight, as those aboard his ship who have hunted the whale have met disaster. While trying to drain the oil from the head of a captured sperm whale, Tashtego, one of the Pequod’s harpooners, falls into the whale’s voluminous head, which then rips free of the ship and begins to sink. Queequeg saves Tashtego by diving into the ocean and cutting into the slowly sinking head. During another whale hunt, Pip, the Pequod’s black cabin boy, jumps from a whaleboat and is left behind in the middle of the ocean.

He goes insane as the result of the experience and becomes a crazy but prophetic jester for the ship. Soon after, the Pequod meets the Samuel Enderby, a whaling ship whose skipper, Captain Boomer, has lost an arm in an encounter with Moby Dick. The two captains discuss the whale; Boomer, happy simply to have survived his encounter, cannot understand Ahab’s lust for vengeance. Not long after, Queequeg falls ill and has the ship’s carpenter make him a coffin in anticipation of his death. He recovers, however, and the coffin eventually becomes the Pequod’s replacement life buoy. Ahab orders a harpoon forged in the expectation that he will soon encounter Moby Dick. He baptizes the harpoon with the blood of the Pequod’s three harpooners. The Pequod kills several more whales. Issuing a prophecy about Ahab’s death, Fedallah declares that Ahab will first see two hearses, the second of which will be made only from American wood, and that he will be killed by hemp rope. Ahab interprets these words to mean that he will not die at sea, where there are no hearses and no hangings.

A typhoon hits the Pequod, illuminating it with electrical fire. Ahab takes this occurrence as a sign of imminent confrontation and success, but Starbuck, the ship’s first mate, takes it as a bad omen and considers killing Ahab to end the mad quest. After the storm ends, one of the sailors falls from the ship’s masthead and drowns—a grim foreshadowing of what lies ahead. Ahab’s fervent desire to find and destroy Moby Dick continues to intensify, and the mad Pip is now his constant companion. The Pequod approaches the equator, where Ahab expects to find the great whale. The ship encounters two more whaling ships, the Rachel and the Delight, both of which have recently had fatal encounters with the whale. Ahab finally sights Moby Dick. The harpoon boats are launched, and Moby Dick attacks Ahab’s harpoon boat, destroying it. The next day, Moby Dick is sighted again, and the boats are lowered once more. The whale is harpooned, but Moby Dick again attacks Ahab’s boat. Fedallah, trapped in the harpoon line, is dragged overboard to his death.

Starbuck must maneuver the Pequod between Ahab and the angry whale. On the third day, the boats are once again sent after Moby Dick, who once again attacks them. The men can see Fedallah’s corpse lashed to the whale by the harpoon line. Moby Dick rams the Pequod and sinks it. Ahab is then caught in a harpoon line and hurled out of his harpoon boat to his death. All of the remaining whaleboats and men are caught in the vortex created by the sinking Pequod and pulled under to their deaths. Ishmael, who was thrown from a boat at the beginning of the chase, was far enough away to escape the whirlpool, and he alone survives. He floats atop Queequeg’s coffin, which popped back up from the wreck, until he is picked up by the Rachel, which is still searching for the crewmen lost in her earlier encounter with Moby Dick.

More Help Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville: Text, Ebook Herman Melville Moby-Dick , written in 1851, recounts the adventures of the narrator Ishmael as he sails on the whaling ship Pequod under the command of Captain Ahab. Ishmael believes he has signed onto a routine commission aboard a normal whaling vessel, but he soon learns that Captain Ahab is not guiding the Pequod in the simple pursuit of commerce but is seeking one specific whale, Moby-Dick, a great while whale infamous for his giant size and his ability to destroy the whalers that seek him. Captain Ahab's wooden leg is the result of his first encounter with the whale, when he lost both leg and ship. After the ship sails it becomes clear that Captain Ahab is bent on revenge and he intends to get Moby-Dick. Ahab demonstrates erratic behavior from the very beginning and his eccentricities magnify as the voyage progresses. As the novel draws to a conclusion, the Pequod encounters the whaling ship Rachel.

The Rachel's captain asks Ahab to help him in a search and rescue effort for his whaling-crew that went missing the day before -- and the captain's son is among the missing. But when Ahab learns that the crew disappeared while tangling with Moby-Dick he refuses the call to aid in the rescue so that he may hunt Moby-Dick instead. The encounter with Moby-Dick brings a tragic end to the affair. Ishmael alone survives, using his friend Queequeg's coffin as a flotation device until he is ironically rescued by the Rachel which has continued to search for its missing crew. Readers, teachers and students should also take note of a peculiar historical curiosity. After enjoying some success in the 1840s, the publication of Moby-Dick marked Melville's decline as a popular writer. He was unable to support himself as a writer and accepted a job at the New York Customs House. He continued to write, even as he faded into obscurity, turning to poetry in his later years. He published his poems but they were ignored and went unread. Like his novel about the great white whale, his poems are also esteemed by modern critics and scholars.

It was only in the early 1900s that Moby-Dick gained attention and acclaim. During his lifetime, the novel sold a scant 3,000 copies. In modern times the novel is not only considered a great American classic, it is also heralded as one of greatest novels in the English language. I hope you enjoy reading it. Teachers and students looking for further summary and analysis might wish to read D. H. Lawrence's chapter on Moby-Dick Herman Melville . Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World . WGBH American Experience | PBS Other Biographies When Herman Melville died in 1891, his death was noted in only one local newspaper, which carried a brief description of the "long forgotten" author. Not until the early 20th century was Melville's novel Moby Dick first recognized as a literary masterpiece and touted as a cornerstone of modern American literature. Born to a New York City merchant in 1819, Melville fought for a greatness that would not be realized during his lifetime.

Melville's father supported his seven children importing French dry goods, but in 1830 he decided to try his luck in the fur business in Albany, NY. Within two years, the family was bankrupt and Herman's father died suddenly. Melville and his siblings left school to work in the family fur and cap business, with Melville working several other jobs as well -- filling in teaching positions at local schools, working on his uncle's farm, and clerking in a local bank. Despite these difficulties, Herman Melville read extensively on his own, consuming mythology, anthropology, and history. He was fascinated with Shakespeare's poetic devices and their ability to capture an audience. He was also raised hearing the thrilling story of the whaleship Essex, which was attacked by a whale and sunk when Melville was just a year old. Melville's captivation with the terrifying grandeur of whales, the audacity of whalers, and the relationship between the two would be a motivating factor behind his writing. In 1839, at the age of 20, Melville took his first voyage across the Atlantic sea as a cabin boy on the merchant ship the St. Lawrence.

After this expedition and a year exploring the West, Melville joined the crew of the whaling ship Acushnet in January of 1841. The thrilling adventure that occurred during the next three years would satiate his desire for excitement and provide him with his material for his first three novels. After a year and a half aboard the Acushnet, Melville and a fellow seaman deserted the ship, only to be captured by cannibals in the Marquesas Islands, the Typee. Although Melville was treated well, he sought rescue on the Australia whale ship Lucy Ann when it arrive on the Marquesas a month after his capture. On the Lucy Ann Melville traveled to Tahiti, where his unusual journey continued when he, along with the crew, committed mutiny by refusing their duty. Briefly jailed, Melville escaped and sailed to the nearby island Eimeo, where he worked on a potato farm. More than five months after deserting the Acushnet, Melville's adventures were not over. Tiring of life on Eimeo, he joined the crew of whaler Charles and Henry, where he worked as harpooner.

When the Charles and Henry anchored in Maui Island five months later in April of 1843, Melville took up work as a clerk and bookkeeper in a general store in Honolulu. In August, 1843, Melville enlisted in the US Navy and embarked on the final leg of his journey, working as a seaman on the Navy ship United States through the Pacific. In October 1844, Melville returned to his mother's house determined to write about his adventures. His subsequent writings borrowed from his own experiences as well as other peoples' fantastic stories that he heard during his travels. Because of his extensive experience as a seaman and a whaler, his descriptions of life out at sea were comprehensive and unflinchingly accurate. Melville was also able to communicate the fear and terror of a whale hunt, a feat that would make his greatest work, Moby Dick, a literary tribute to the whaling industry. His first manuscript, a tale in which the narrator, Tommo, is captured by Typee cannibals, was initially rejected in the United States because publishers refused to believe the validity of the story.

The story was finally accepted in London, where Melville's older brother, Gansevoort, was working for the American Legation. Typee was published in Britain in February of 1846 to favorable reviews. Lauded for its ethnographic focus exploring the relationship between a New Englander and a foreign culture, Melville's story gained even more popularity after one of Herman's former crewmates came forward to validate its factual base. This new based-on-a-true-story status coupled with Americans' high interest in maritime adventures, helped Typee sell over 6,000 copies in two years when it was published in the U.S. In the midst of his initial years as a profitable author, Melville married Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of the chief justice of Massachusetts and a close family friend. The chief justice, Lemuel Shaw, would later support Melville in the late 1850s during his financial struggles. With his new bride, Melville moved to New York City to live with his younger brother, mother, and four sisters in late 1847. Despite these crowded quarters, Melville was able to continue writing, and he finished two more novels within two years.

Encouraged by his success with Typee, Melville published Omoo in 1847, a story inspired by his time in the Polynesian Islands of Tahini and Eimeo. Omoo was just as successful as Typee, and Melville immediately began work on his third installment of his maritime adventures, Mardi and a Voyage Thither. Published in 1849, Mardi was not as successful as his previous two books, a fact credited largely to his increased use of allegory and a more farfetched storyline. From 1849 to 1850, Melville wrote two more novels, Redburn and White-Jacket, both of which he later claimed to write simply for the money and the prestige. These attempts to inflate his image as an author won him general acclaim and the novels were modest hits. Melville moved on to his most prolific endeavor yet -- a story about one man's need to conquer and kill a great white whale. Melville had first thought of the idea after reading a 1839 article by Jeremiah N.

Renolds entitled "Mocha Dick: Or, the White Whale of the Pacific." While he drafted what would become the novel Moby Dick, Melville met and befriended Nathaniel Hawthorne, who had recently published the literary masterpiece The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne provided Melville with precious feedback on his manuscript, and encouraged him to change his current draft, a detailed account of whaling, into an allegorical novel. In October 1851, The Whale, printed later as Moby Dick, was published in London. The allegorical undertones that Melville cultivated throughout the novel picked up on the link between whaling and a mid-19th century emerging American identity. The story centers around the narrator Ishmael, a sailor on the whaleship Pequod. The ship captain, Ahab, has lost his leg to Moby Dick on a previous expedition, and he is motivated to the point of derangement by revenge for the whale's life. Powered by this plot, Melville's Moby Dick spun the parable of the hunt for the great white whale as an emblem of the human condition and the reckless expansion of the American republic.

Despite Melville's high expectations for Moby Dick, literary critics largely disregarded the novel. Many critics were impressed with the detailed account of whaling voyages, but during Melville's entire lifetime, the book sold only 3,000 copies. Interest in maritime adventures was dwindling as Americans were setting their imaginations towards the potential in the West. After the disappointment of Moby Dick's reception, Melville faced a battle against obscurity and financial ruin for the remainder of his life. In 1852, he wrote Pierre, a psychological romance based on his own childhood, but a negative critical reception and a poor sales performance cost him a significant amount of his savings. He turned to short pieces and poetry, publishing several pieces in Putnam's Monthly Magazine from 1853 to 1854. The general public ignored his short novel Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1855), and Melville entered a period of darkness and depression. A trip to Europe to visit his friend Hawthorne in October 1856 did little to lighten his melancholy over a lost dream of literary fame.

He toured the country from 1857 to 1860, giving lectures on various topics such as "Statues in Rome," "The South Seas," and the vague subject of "Traveling." In 1863, Melville moved back to New York City where he later found a job as a customs inspector on the New York docks. Throughout his following 20 years as a dock worker, Melville continued writing, publishing the poem Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War in 1866. The chronological piece included depictions of all types of soldiers from both sides of the war, rendered accurately from a trip to the war front to visit his cousin the year before. Despite being considered among the best poems of the 19th century, Battle-Pieces sold a meager 486 copies. Further heartache befell Melville when his oldest son, Malcolm, committed suicide in 1867. Again Melville turned to travel to gain perspective and possible writing material. His 1876 poem Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land drew upon his experiences in Europe and the Holy Land and set a baseline for a theme of religious crisis.

Melville continued to pen poetry throughout these later years, printing John Marr and Other Sailors privately for friends and family in 1888. Melville was working on the manuscript of Billy Budd, Foretopman, a story about a sailor falsely accused of involvement in mutiny, when he died of a heart attack on September 28, 1891. In the 1920s, literary scholars began to identify Moby Dick as a work that commented upon larger issues of the American experience in the 19th century. Critics increasingly recognized Moby Dick as one of the greatest pieces of American literature, and they began to discuss the allegorical implications at long last. The novel has been described as both an allegory to the push west (the prairie being the sea) and the Gold Rush (the gold being the whale), and it has been taught in classrooms worldwide for its successful combination of philosophical speculation, Shakespearean rhetoric and dramatic staging while moving an intelligent and authentic, albeit fantastic, plot. Today, Moby Dick is a staple of many high school curriculum reading lists, and a 1956 film version by John Huston introduced the story into popular culture.

In Moby Dick and his other works, Melville was able to incorporate stories of adventure with examinations of many inherently American themes: religion versus science, human limitations and emerging technology, and truth versus American myth. The ramifications that Americans can take from reading Melville center around the immoral manifestation of the democratic ideal that Americans were facing during the height of the whaling industry and one that we still battle with today. Starbucks almost named after Moby-Dick doomed ship Peqoud | Daily Mail Online comments It's the largest coffee house in the world, but Starbucks may have had a very different story had one of its founders had his way. Writer Gordon Bowke, who co-founded the company in 1971, originally wanted to name the company Peqoud, after the doomed whaleship in Moby-Dick. Luckily, his business partners settled on the name of the ship's first mate instead. Global: Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world, with 17,009 stores in 50 countries, including over 11,000 in the U.S.

According to Howard Schultz's book Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, Mr Bowker suggested the name Pequod to his then-creative partner, Terry Heckler, who responded: 'No one's going to drink a cup of Pee-quod!' RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share After a brainstorming session, Mr Bowker's co-founders, teachers Jerry Baldwin and Zev Siegl, decided Captain Ahab's first mate Starbuck would be the name of the then-unknown brand. A classic: Moby-Dick, by American author Herman Melville, was first published in 1851 It was not the only inspiration the entrepreneurs found in the unusual name. It also inspired Starbucks' famed green and white logo, which features a Siren from Greek Mythology. As the story goes, Sirens lured sailors to shipwreck off the coast of an island in the South Pacific, also called Starbuck Island. The company, however, could have gone by many different names with founders so captivated by the Herman Melville classic.

Stubb, Flask, Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo, Pip and Fedallah are among the other characters in the story about Captain Ahab's search for a monstrous sperm whale wandering the seas after it destroyed his boat and bit off his leg. Starbucks, it seems, proved a wise choice. The company later changed hands and Mr Schultz became the company's sole owner when he bought out the three founders in 1987. Starbucks went on to become the largest coffee house company in the world, with 17,009 stores in 50 countries, including more than 11,000 in the U.S. THE MAIN CHARACTERS IN MOBY-DICK: Moby-Dick, first published in 1851 by American author Herman Melville, is peppered with unusual names that could have replaced Starbuck. Its main characters include: Ishmael - The narrator, and a junior member of the crew of the Pequod Captain Ahab - Lost his leg to Moby Dick and is in a search for the monstrous sperm whale Starbuck - The first mate of the Pequod.

A Quaker who believes that Christianity offers a way to interpret the world around him Stubb - The second mate of the Pequod, characterised by his good humour Flask - The third mate of the Pequod with a confrontational attitude that earned him the nickname King-Post Queequeg - Starbuck’s skilled harpooner and Ishmael’s best friend, a former prince drom South Sea island Tashtego - Stubb’s harpooner and a Gay Head Indian Daggoo - Flask’s harpooner

Question: Who captained the whaling ship Pequod
Answer: Captain Ahab